Monday, May 17, 2004

Team Sweden World Cup Roster Announced

TSN.CA reports that Team Sweden has named their roster nominations for the upcoming World Cup of Hockey.

The biggest omission would be one Michael Nylander, who had a very productive year this year, albeit very short season, with 14 points in 18 games. This was after 56 points in 71 games in 2002-03.

The IKEA boys have had a very rough time of it these past few years, as their development system has been turning out very few star players and bonafide NHL prospects. This roster, however, looks fairly strong and certainly capable of getting some colour of medal in this tournament (Not Gold, because Canada will win that ;} ).

The biggest question for the Swedes, and their greatest weakness, is definitely goaltending. Tommy Salo can no longer be considered the automatic #1 goalie for "Tre Kronor."

As many Oilers fans will tell you, Tommy Salo has been an extremely poor goaltender in the past couple of years, and Ty Conklin is definitely the best goaltender in the Oily city these days. Aside from Salo�s choke job against Belarus at Salt Lake City, Salo�s playoff performances in Edmonton leave a LOT to be desired.

Daniel Alfredsson doesn�t seem too concerned, however �"I don't know who will be the starter," said Alfredsson. "Tommy's always been good for the national team and in the NHL."

"Everything gets blown up because of the miss he made in Salt Lake, but he also won gold in 1994."

Well 1994 was 10 years ago, and 10 years ago, people were wearing Club Monaco t-shirts all over the place. How many people do you see wearing that brand today?

The alternatives to Salo are Mikael Tellqvist and Henrik Lundqvist...not exactly awe-inspiring stuff.

The Swedes will pretty much have to count on their usual defensive choke-job in order to have success. I don�t think their more offensive-minded �Torpedo� system can function too well with the goaltending that they have.

Oh, and only 2 non-NHLers (Lundqvist and Jorgen), which makes sense given the venues. I expect the other European teams to follow suit and dress fewer European-based players than they would for the World Championships. Of course, the Russkies are still run by the old hardliners, and who knows who they will pick, or who will choose not to play for Mother Russia.